


The Immortal Lee's Enemy

by Keenir



Category: Burn Notice, Highlander: The Series, NCIS
Genre: 2009, Faatin Amal - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-27
Updated: 2010-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-14 04:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have to do more than know where they bodies are buried - you have to be ready to kill them if they escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Immortal Lee's Enemy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Strangevisitor7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strangevisitor7/gifts).



> Author's Note: I kept trying to write something for you, but the only thing that was more than a page long, had the Immortal Michelle Lee used in "Three Views of a Person" - so this is a sequel. Bad news: the vid "reunion" seems to have vanished from the link I'd provided there; if anyone knows where to find it, please provide a link; thank you.

Sleep is fragmentary, not so much snatched as tripped into and hurriedly pulling out of as soon as possible.

 _Is that why this madman - a very mad man - is...?_

Ziva shakes her head, not liking where that train of thought heads: right into the dark tunnel of insanity. It's a trick knife, she tells herself, not for the first time.

This felt like a new day - but she wasn't certain _which_ day it was. The third? The seventh?

Her ears caught the amused clapping which her captor always did when he - when he wakes up, Ziva corrected herself before she could even _think_ the alternative.

"Did we enjoy ourselves?" he asked Ziva. He was a serial kidnapper of Navy officers, driving each one insane before setting them free. "Come now, Officer David," he said, his tone perfectly reasonable. "Answer me," he requested.

Ziva remained silent, eyes closed so as to deny him even the satisfaction of her looking in his direction - she was and has been bound to a wooden chair securely stuck in the concrete floor.

"Ask me anything," he said, tiredly pleading with her. "I'll answer anything with the truth."

 _No!_ Ziva thought but refused to say, for that would be caving to his demands.

"Fine," he said, standing up this time - sometimes he'd done it sitting against the wall, sometimes lying on the floor; always in front of Ziva - drew the dagger to his abdomen and struck at an angle upwards, heartwards.

Pulled the dagger out as he started to - _to pretend to die,_ Ziva re-told herself as her abductor fell to the floor once more.

Only now did Ziva open her eyes. _Deliberate?_ she wondered as she saw that he'd fallen towards her, the dagger within stretching distance of her left foot.

Nothing went awry as she pulled the blade to her. Not a problem in sight the entire time she was cutting herself free. Finding her NCIS jacket at the back of the room and the foot of the stairs, she wrapped the dagger in it. Not an obstacle to be found then or as she went up the stairs and through an empty television room.

It was a few steps away from the front door - a long straight line from the basement floor long-caked in blood - that she was grabbed from behind. "Tsk, Officer David," he said, his breath hot on her ear. "That's not polite."

Ziva slammed her head back into his, struck her elbow into his stomach, following those up with a slash from the dagger as he staggered back, then kicked him in a way designed to not just break ribs but to impale the lungs fatally on those ribs.

And she got out of there, running, racing, speeding before she called it in. She knew what procedure called for, but she was only human.  
 **  
.~~.**

 **77 YEARS AGO:**

 ** __**Looks familiar, Methos thought to himself; _distinct in many ways, but the idea is the same._ Looking over at his fellow Immortal, he thought, _May you still be around when this guy gets out of this closed pit...thousands of years from now._ After all, his own hadn't failed thus far.

"All done," Michelle said, resting her shovel on the grassy edge of where they'd just closed off.

"Think we should carpet the area with rocks, maybe a few boulders?"

She just looked at him in disbelief. "Second thoughts?"

"Not on this," Methos said. "Never hurts to be thorough, is all."

"In that case... Let's get something to eat first."

Methos nodded. _First time she's bowed to little things like the need to eat when there's still work to be done._ "Sounds like another excellent plan."

As they walked towards the nearest house, Michelle said, "I kinda like it here," the fact of the newly-imprisoned excepted; "I think I'll come back here."

As it was, it was several decades before she again set foot on Vietnamese soil. ****

 **.~~.**

 **PRESENT DAY:**

 **3 months ago:**

 **Miami:  
**  
Nori Phelps was having a drink with Sam Axe and Michael Westen at a casual roadside restaurant when The Buzz drew her attention. Stretching her arms, she casually looked around, and then saw someone who she remembered from her NCIS days.

 _Two Immortals_ , she thought to herself, identifying the man beside 'Faatin Amal' as another Immortal.

They came over to where 'Nori' was sitting. "Much as we hate crashing parties, we need a word with you," the man said to Nori.

"You mind?" Sam asked him.

"Richie, introduce yourself," Faatin smiled. "I'm sorry," she told them.

 _Possible she's acting through a cover identity right now,_ Nori - Michelle Lee - thought to herself. Or this is what she's like when she's not getting revenge on the David family. "Richie, Faatin, I'm terribly sorry," Michelle said, still in her Nori identity. "I completely forgot we'd planned on getting together for drinks," and bore a look of appropriate bashfulness.

"It's okay" Richie said. "Happens to the best of us. We just got off the plane, ourselves."

"We honeymooned in Vietnam," Faatin confided to Michael and Sam soto voice.

"Well congrats," Sam said.

Michael nodded.

"We ran into a guy down there," Richie told Michelle. "He was digging himself out of a pickle when we met." _He didn't challenge us or attack - said he owed us for how we didn't behead him when he was breaching the topsoil... and then he knocked us both out._

 _I told Joe about it, just so the Watchers were aware... and a minute later, Methos calls me_.

"New friend for you?" Michelle asked, her voice chilled.

"Hell no." _Just how many jars within jars was he inside? And how far did he have to dig?_ But Richie didn't ask that - the Old Man hadn't told him, and Richie had a feeling that Michelle wasn't about to be any more forthcoming on the matter.

Nori's shoulders stopped being so relaxed. How she held her hands changed as well, as did the tightness of her lips. And her gaze became a lot more penetrating.

"Adam told me I should tell you in person," Richie said. "And I shouldn't do it with just the two of us present," _and he told me to tell you that too._

"I see," Michelle said, coming out from under the guise of being Nori.

Michael and Sam both blinked. "Something we can help with?" Michael asked.

"This is an internal matter, gentlemen, but thank you," Michelle said, standing up. "And thank you for allowing me to help you on your recent case," and

"Nice to meet you," Richie told Sam and Michael before following after her, Faatin behind him.

Michael's face was question enough. "Whoa, don't look at me, Mikey," Sam said. "I did the full background check on her - one hundred percent civilian. Nothing that would give her a reason to be so much as behind a security checkpoint."

"Can't think of many civilians who can do what she just did," Michael _. Unless they're civilians like me._

"Multiple personalities?" Sam said, reaching for an explanation.

By the next day, there was no evidence anywhere that Nori Phelps had ever existed.  
 **  
.~~.**

 **PRESENT DAY:**

 **Today:**

Ziva provided a decent glare.

"Terribly sorry," said Dr. Per Sussman, the shrink assigned to her case. "Would you much rather I ask you what you think about that?"

"No," Ziva said. "What I _want_ is to be out there, hunting him down."

 _Cassandra, version 2._ "Hunting?"

"That's right."

"Do you have any leads?" Methos asked.

"None of the blood is identifiable, as his or as anyone else's," Ziva said. "Not even in the kitchen." _And where is he? He couldn't have gotten 30 yards before keeling over!_

Ziva sighed. "Abby says the blood isn't simply degraded, every blood cell has ruptured and all the DNA collapsed." _Fallen apart. Like the coherent speech of his victims._

"Fingerprints?" the good doctor asked.

"You really want to know?" Ziva asked, surprised.

"Your recovery is something you have to want. Besides, I have a curiosity about such things." _And I do - you can never know too much about where all the other Immortals are._ "Fingerprints?"

" 'Too many oils' Abby said."

"A shame," said Per.

"And they can't catch him!" Ziva exclaimed. "Not even with him leaving me flowers at my house!"

"Flowers?"

'Buttercups.

 _The flower that smells like poison gas; that haunt survivors of World War One._ "If you met your kidnapper this afternoon, what would you do?"

"I'd kill him," Ziva said simply. "Because I clearly failed to do so the last time."

"Hm," the shrink said, then placed a post-it in his palm and jotted something down.

"Yes? What?"

"Meet me here," handing her the post-it and standing up. "Well, Miss David, it seems our time today is up. I'd say you're handling it well.

Not looking at the paper now in her possession, Ziva asked him, "Do you have him?"

"No, I do not. But if you don't want to help, you needn't attend," said Per, who had once gone by the name Pierson. And he walked calmly out of the room.

Ziva looked down at the post-it in her hand. There was an address on it, a house not too far from here...written in Hebrew. ****

 **.~~.**

 **** _It's shabbier than I'd expected,_ Ziva thought once she parked in the right low-rend neighborhood only spitting distance from D.C.'s monuments and museums.

After two knocks, a bushy-tailed boy let her in, smiling at her and saying she wanted the second room on the second floor.

The person who answered the door was - "Mr. Dawson," Ziva said.

"In the flesh," Joe said "Come in, take a load off."

Ziva came in and sat down, though long habit with DiNozzo prompted her to say, "I am not wearing any loads."

 _More than you think you are._ Taking a chair himself, Joe then said, "You need to know that - that we'll help you track down the bastard, that's not an issue."

"Then what is 'an issue'?" Ziva asked.

"Whether or not you want to know the full story about the man who held you captive."

Ziva waved him off: "I do not need to know his childhood; only how it is I failed to kill him."

Joe stomped his came on the floor three times. "The short answer, Ziva, is that you didn't." From a room down the hallway came Dr. Sussman to join them at the dining room table.

And so did a pig-tailed businesswoman in glasses Ziva felt were two sizes too large. "Your captor's name is Harold Klimpt," she told Ziva in a thick accent.

"And _you_ are?" Ziva asked.

Her accent dropped like a brick, "You don't remember me?" humorous at what was par for the course for Immortals had fooled a decorated foreign agent - under stress, granted. She took off the glasses which drew attention away from the rest of a face whose light makeup alone would not have hid her identity from Ziva on any other day.

"Agent Lee?"

Michelle nodded. "The one and only."

"But how? You were dead?"

She nodded again.

"People don't come back from the dead," Ziva said firmly.

Joe rapped his cane against the floor three more times.

The apartment door opened and in came that bushy-tailed kid and -

"Faatin Amal," Ziva spat, recognizing the woman who had helped Eshel frame her. "But..."

"She's dead too," Michelle said. "We know." _Faatin, another of my teacher's few students, had a quiet in-her-sleep death while in custody._

"It's hard to warn for something like this," Joe said.

"This is your posse, Ziva," Faatin said. "You call the shots. If you would prefer I not help you against Harold Kimpt, I will oblige." To Joe, "Do you play bridge, Mr. Dawson?"

"I'm passable at it," Joe said.

"You work for VIVAK," Ziva said to her.

Faatin chuckled, then said, "When last I was in Iran, the Shah did not permit women in such roles. No, Eshel wanted a confederate in his plottings against your father, so I tailored the identity I had at the time to dovetail his dream with his end."

To Joe, Ziva turned and asked, "How is all of this happening?"

"They're Immortal, Ziva," Joe said. "But before you ask, no, Eshel Namin wasn't Immortal - sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and most times a faked death is just a faked death."

"I suppose that made it easier to kill him," not looking at Faatin.

Faatin thought but did not say, _Eshel would have done what he did, Ziva, with or without my help._

"Actually, it's easier to kill another Immortal," Michelle said. "So what do you say, Ziva?"

"I say...we're burning daylight." _Explain in the car. ****_

 **.* * *.**

 **'Hunting the bastard down wasn't the problem it was with most criminals, Immortal and mortal alike. Klimpt wanted Ziva to find him; it's possible he had a warped idea of how to train a pupil, starting with the revelation of the teather's own Immortality...leading him to try it on anyone he could get ahold of.**

 **'The open question is, how will we handle Ziva and her knowledge of all this - of us - after this?'**

 **.--- from the Special Case File entered by Joe Dawson, RET.**

 **.* * *.**

"I'll go around back," Faatin volunteered,"flush him out."

"Same here," Richie said. "I take the left alley, you take the right one?"

Faatin nodded.

"I'll keep watch on the entrance," Methos said.

"That just leaves us," Michelle said to Ziva.

"I - thank you, Michelle; all of you, thank you," Ziva said. "But I can handle it from here."

"Can you?" Richie asked. "Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with bravery. God knows I was full of myself too."

"Was?" Faatin jested.

Methos nodded agreement with her. "Ziva," he said. "From what you recounted to me, you've already killed Klimpt twice. Did you have a goal in mind, maybe kill him a prime number of times?"

"I didn't kill him," Ziva said. "I was mistaken."

"They're so cute at that age," Methos said to the others.

"You can fight him first if you want, Ziva," Michelle said. "But I'm going to be right there too."

Ziva nodded, and just before they all split up as agreed, Methos said, "This is yours," he said, but Ziva couldn't tell if he was addressing her or Michelle.

Ziva and Michelle didn't go too fast in entering the building - not only did they want the Buzz of their confederates to frighten Klimpt to her and Ziva, but Ziva watched as Michelle slowly circled each room they entered. "What are you doing?" Ziva whispered at her.

"Listening for him," Michelle said. _If we'd already explained the Buzz to you, I'd say I was listening for his Buzz, Ziva. But we didn't, so I'll wait until we get out of here._

"Okay," Ziva said, her fingers itching to deal with Klimpt.

Several rooms in, well past the reach of natural light, lit only by overhead bars, Michelle froze, feeling the Buzz. "He's here."

"Where?" Ziva asked, and saw what Michelle was pulling out. "A sword?"

"Traditional. And effective," Michelle said, brushing her jacket closed against her body.

And that was when the opposing door opened, with their enemy sliding into view, sword-first.

"You!" Ziva said in what would've been a hiss if she'd been closer to him.

"A delight to see you again," Klimpt said happily to Ziva.

"Harold Klimpt," Michelle said.

"Michelle, yes?" Klimpt asked, recalling. "Or that was what you called yourself then."

"You still want to do this?" Michelle asked Ziva in an undertone.

"Definitely," Ziva said, and walked across the room alone, one arm extended for a handshake.

Harold smiled and freed his good hand by switching his sword to the other hand. "So nice to see you come being sensible," he said to Ziva. "Even if you did come here with her."

"You don't much like her, do you?" having come within spitting distance, yet not spitting upon him.

He smiled an unsettling smile. "What I am, I owe to her. My every crime, I lay at her feet."

Close enough to shake hands, Ziva instead grabbed his good wrist and spun herself and that arm behind around behind him. "Like the dog you are," she spat at him, spittle flying free.

"I am innocent," he replied in crisp Hebrew, with one word having been coined and abandoned at the turn of the 20th Century.

Ziva knew the word from advanced studies.

Harold knew it from having eaten briefly at the same table as the father of modern Hebrew.

"The devil can quote scripture," Ziva replied, and kicked him forwards, only letting go afterwards.

Klimpt fell to the ground, rolling once, turning his sword to avoid crippling one leg.

"Get up!" Ziva yelled at him.

He complied, slowly, his shoulder correcting all damage as he rose.

Ziva's eyes didn't believe what was before her. "Impossible."

"As I said," Michelle said under her breath. "My turn," she announced loudly enough for both of them to hear.

"Afraid for her?" Klimpt asked her, not turning away from Ziva.

"How much do you want to suffer?" To Ziva, _"This_ is Immortality. He can recover from whatever is dealt out to him."

"Then what is your plan?" Ziva asked Michelle.

"A fight to the death."

Klimpt bowed to Ziva, a full formal presentation. "May I?" he asked her.

"Go ahead," Ziva told him. _If he heals from everything, then how can it be a fight to the death?_

Harold turned and switched hands, twirling his shortsword. "Betrayer," he accused Michelle.

"Impetuous fool," Michelle replied with, letting him come to her, her rapier drawn and lying in wait, her arms trained to patience.

To Ziva, it was a swordfight where fisticuffs were permitted. A duel which heavily favored the smaller Michelle.

Gutted both literally and figuratively, Klimpt lay on the ground, his shoulders feeling the shoe of the victor-to-be. "Cut clean?" he requested.

"Always," Michelle said. _To do otherwise is unthinkable._ "Though its better than you deserve." And she sliced, swooping her rapier in an arc through his neck. Turning her head to look at Ziva, Michelle commanded her to, "Run! Now!"

It was the electricity in the room, as much as the tone of the order itself, that put Ziva on the move. ****

 **.~~.**

 **Location: NCIS Offices:**

 **One Day Later:**

"That was Vance," Tony said once he'd returned his phone to its cradle. "He wants a word, Ziva."

"Very well then," Ziva said, having finally returned to work, and now this. She went upstairs... and found Director Vance's secretary absent, but Vance and Dawson were standing there, waiting for her. "You wanted to see me, Director?"

"Congratulations, David," Vance said.

Before Ziva could ask what specifically the congratulations was for, Joe opened the Director's door and told Ziva, "If you need anything, we're right here."

Looking in at who was waiting in there, Ziva asked her boss and Joe, "My mother? Why is she here?"

"She wanted to congratulate you in person," Vance said.

"And to fill in the rest of the story," Joe said. _And to welcome you to the family of Watchers._

Ziva went inside, and as the doors closed all but a crack, she sat down opposite her mother.


End file.
